Clarity Out of Clutter
For anyone who doesn’t know it, one of the things I love to do as much as write is to create photos. This photo is an old one and I have been thinking about how it is an example of slowing down and creating clarity out of chaos. And, in keeping with the theme of this blog, how creating clarity out of chaos is really what managing anxiety and attending therapy is all about.
On the day I created this photo I had gotten a bit lost during a drive around Nova Scotia’s South Shore, and ended up at the end of a dirt road that led to a wharf. It was chaos, as wharves in the height of fishing season tend to be. There were piles of rope and buckets strewn about, and at least 15 boats of every color of the rainbow were docked along the mooring posts. There was a lot of visual clutter.
The thing about arriving in a place of chaos and clutter is that if you approach it slowly and thoughtfully it can be a beautiful mindful exercise in identifying patterns, colors, textures, and details that exist beneath the mess.
My brain is often an overstimulated, busy mess. Therapy is a lot about digging around and identifying patterns, with a goal of making order and clarity out of things that cause us stress, anxiety or depression. Therapy can be really, really awful at times but the ah-ha moments when the patterns and reasons reveal themselves feel very much like capturing a great photograph.
The reason this photo represents order out of chaos for me is because I had to search for it at that cluttered wharf. It is a photo of the rope from a boat that is moored on the wharf’s edge. In reality it took up only about 12x7 inches of space among several large Cape Islander boats.
The perfectly lined up rope and chain are two very different textures which compliment each other, and are a bit like puzzle pieces that you don’t think are going to fit together. Discovering puzzle pieces that you didn’t think fit together is half the reason I go to therapy. For example, learning the patterns we recreate from our childhoods and why we have them; patterns which may not serve us but we carry into life as adults, are like solving the cryptogram on Sunday morning. Maybe we choose partners who are just like our parents, or we realize that we are so keen to identify special things about others because we really just want someone to see us for how unique we are. We all have reasons for doing things that surprise us if we dig a little deep into them, and the slow process of learning these things, if accompanied by a growth mindset, can lead to creating the best version of ourselves. It is slow and hard work.
The negative space of the yellow in the photo represent the space we all need to allow ourselves to make sense of the chaos and to clear the clutter.
This blog is a slow work in progress, much like myself, and I have lots of sharing to come. I wanted to share this photo and these thoughts with those of you who have been following along so far. I appreciate every one of you who reads my words and enjoys my photos.
What do you see when you look at this photo? Does the negative open space make you feel calm, or do you want to fill it up? Do you have a puzzle that you need to solve, and do you give yourself grace and space to work out the complications that arise from the chaos?
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